Insomniac
by winterhearts
Summary: Every night was a sleepless one, where hearts could go into hiding and silenced tears could finally fall.
1. Chapter 1

Insomniac

_Author's Note: This story was inspired by my own sleeping problems. Sometimes I just lie awake in bed, thinking about the things that went and go on in my life, and what could have been. Sometimes I even wonder about lost loves and crushes. This is exactly what Toby and Kelly do in this story, although they aren't thinking about each other. Will their insomnia be cured? Read on and find out._

_Also, the Toby/Kelly scenes take place in the same timeline, meaning that when it's nighttime for Kelly, Toby's POV is during the same period. Plus, the Office timeline is a little messed up…the events of "Fun Run" come a week after "The Job", and the week after that is where our story begins. Just clarifying that so the timeline isn't confusing. _

_Just a warning: There are spoilers for "The Job", "Fun Run", and "Dunder Mifflin Infinity" included. Story is T for swearing and sexual references in later chapters. _

_Disclaimer: I don't own the US Office. That belongs to Greg Daniels._

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It was just another night for Toby Flenderson. Another night looking up at the stars, shining like the colossal gas giants that they were. Another night thinking that he would be better off among the constellations instead of trying to survive another hellish workday (made more so by his boss Michael) at the Dunder-Mifflin paper company. And most importantly, another night without any sleep.

He'd been going through this insomnia for a few weeks now. At first, Toby would appear tired, his eyes fluttering closed as soon as his red-haired head hit the pillows. But after much tossing and turning, those same eyes would quickly open up again. He'd shrug, attempting to fall asleep again, but to no avail. The restlessness would take over, the eyes would open up again, and the wave of drowsiness that usually hit Toby at night never came. That first day, it was slightly odd, but by the end of the week, Toby began to surmise that he really did have a problem, since nothing--not even a tall glass of warm milk--could put him to sleep. But what was it?

Dr. Burke, his doctor, chalked it all up to insomnia. "Try taking a sleeping pill and see if that helps," he suggested, since that had helped cure his insomnia. So Toby popped one pill. Then another, and another, and another. But Toby remained in his nocturnal state, silently begging his body to be at least a little bit tired. But it was all to no avail. The next morning at work, however, he'd feel like he just took a flight from Scranton to Singapore and back again, and had to rely on several cups of coffee (thank God for the goodness of Starbucks) just to get through the workday. However, most of his coworkers found him a tired-looking person to begin with, so they weren't concerned. In his mind, Toby wished they were. Not even Kelly, an infamous chatterbox and the main source of all workplace gossip, noticed that Toby was acting even more reserved and miserable than usual. Was he that invisible that Kelly Kapoor herself didn't give him a second glance? Toby had to wonder.

Whether it was insomnia or something else, though, Toby found a way to make a nighttime hobby out of his sleep-deprived condition. Back when he'd gone to Bishop O'Hara High School, he'd had a girlfriend named Wendy who adored stargazing and anything to do with outer space. While they dated, Wendy would take him out to the park on Friday nights to look up the stars, pointing out various stars and constellations to Toby. Now, years later, Toby was at a local park in Scranton, armed with a telescope and a book on constellations, reliving his stargazing high school days again, but all alone this time. His ex-wife Kathy (who was also a devout atheist and clashed with Toby's Roman Catholic beliefs, another thing that led to their divorce) had never been into astronomy.

Toby positioned his telescope, looking for anything new or different, like Sirius the Dog Star or the Andromeda constellation. He didn't see much though; just a cluster of star that looked like the Little Dipper and a blinking star that turned out to be the light of a helicopter. Still, Toby continued to scan Scranton's velvety blue night sky, just gazing at random stars. He had no idea why he suddenly took up interest in stargazing again, or even why he was looking for intricate star clusters that never seemed to appear in the sky. Sometimes you just did things for the sake of doing them, which Toby always did. He just cruised through life without any sense of where he was going or what he was doing, and even now, with his insomnia, things weren't any different. So Toby straightened up his telescope lens and kept looking through them.

When the sun began to rise and the beautiful, chaotic darkness had been touched on by light, Toby packed up his stuff and headed for home. In a few hours, he would have to go back to reality--well, as realistic as a day at Dunder-Mifflin could get. It was only Tuesday, and already Toby wanted the weekend to hurry up so he could escape work for a few days. Yes, work was that bad. And it had gotten even worse just a week ago. Toby shuddered, not wanting to dwell on what had happened. It was just too painful.

As Toby exited the park, a flash of red moved past him. There were curls, long, auburn curls, fluttering in the early morning breeze. A woman in a red-and-blue-striped jumpsuit was jogging past the gates of Lackawanna Community Park. Toby took a double-take, suddenly startled. _Could it be…? But what was she doing up so early? _The familiar redhead stopped, ducking her head down to retie her Reeboks. Toby's optimism crumbled. The eyes were hazel, not gray. Her hair had hints of brown highlights in it, and she was much taller than….her. It wasn't the receptionist that Toby knew and once loved.

The Pam look-alike spotted him, giving him a small nod. "Hey. You an early riser too?"

Toby nodded back. "Uh, yeah. I take my telescope at night and run in the morning before work…I live near the park." So she _wasn't_ her. But she looked like her. That was enough to start a relationship, right? "Uh…I'm Toby Flenderson."

The Pam look-alike smiled. "Flenderson, huh? Cool name. I'm Ann Schuyler. I just moved back to Scranton two weeks ago."

"From where?" Toby asked. He was curious, plus he wanted Ann to think that he was interested in her. Not that he wasn't; she seemed nice and looked very pretty. But he wasn't in love with her, like he was with--

"Costa Rica."

"_Huh?" _

"I moved back to Scranton from Costa Rica. It's very beautiful year-round, and the culture and cuisine is just amazing. You've got to go down there for a vacation when you have the chance. I lived for two years in San Juan and I miss it so much, even though I'm happy to be back home," Ann explained. "The hardest part was leaving my boyfriend Ricky behind. But we're trying to make it work long-distance."

_Boyfriend_. One of the two-syllabic words that Toby despised the most. It was the word that caused him and Amy to break up, since she still had feelings for her ex. It was the one thing that most women in college didn't want to call him. And it was the one thing separating him from the love of his life, Pamela Morgan Beesly.

A clunking feeling filled Toby's chest, causing tears to prick the corners of his eyes in the process. He couldn't even have Pam's doppelganger, which further proved how pathetic his love life was.

"I have to go. Nice meeting you, Ann," were his parting words, extremely awkward to his own ears. Ann smiled again, telling Toby the same before happily jogging off to who-knows-where, while Toby dragged himself back home with sleepy eyes and a heavy heart. Some things really would never change.

**Reviews are appreciated! Next part is Kelly's, which should be going up sometime this weekend.**


	2. Chapter 2

Kelly Kapoor had never been up this late. Ever. New Year's Eye totally didn't count, 'cause it was New Year's Eve and you were supposed to stay up late. That was the tradition! But tonight wasn't New Year's Eve, and yet she was still up, even though it was two o'clock in the morning.

It was all so weird. Usually, she went to bed at ten o'clock, right after The Hills or whatever other nine o'clock program came on had finished. But for the past few weeks, Kelly had been unable to sleep, even after she pulled up her covers, drank down some warm milk, took a sleeping pill, and shut her eyes for twenty minutes. Why was her body acting so weird? Kelly prided herself on getting exactly nine hours of sleep a night, just like the French, who everyone knows are the people in the world who get the most rest, so she can wake up refreshed and happy and not cranky with yucky bags under her eyes. Ew. But she hadn't been on her normal sleep schedule, which totally messed her up for the rest of the day. She was actually less perky and happy than usual, and almost everyone noticed it, even the customers who called her customer service line. Even Toby, who was usually Mr. Shy and Quiet and totally unobservant (Or was it nonobservant? Kelly wasn't that great with all that prefix/suffix crap.) noticed that Kelly wasn't acting like herself.

She decided, after a few days, to stop trying and failing to fall asleep and use her time for other things, like updating her Twitter page and her blog and watching reruns of Gossip Girl and Keeping up with the Kardashians on TiVo. And they totally helped her to stop being so mopey, at least for a short while. Then, during a Google search at home, she randomly came across the Dunder-Mifflin page and saw a small article on the home page devoted to the company's new corporate manager, a former temp at the Scranton branch. And then her heart shattered into pieces yet again.

Her ex-boyfriend, the total asshole who shall remain nameless, had Jan Levinson's old job. The same person who'd never made a sale was now higher than all of Dunder-Mifflin's salesmen. The same guy who'd been the newbie to a big company branch was now a big-shot in New York. The same guy who'd hooked up with her on February 13th, dated her afterwards, and told her he loved her after sleeping with her once was now a bastard who'd lied to her about a phone call and broke up with her because having a job in corporate was sooo much better than dating Kelly Kapoor, right? She just shook her head, shutting down the computer. She'd really wished that she could sleep now, so she could forget his face, even for a moment. But she couldn't, not at all. Even if she did go to sleep, she might dream of him, or dream of being together with him, and she didn't want that to happen at all. So she stayed awake, watching TV and reading fun Meg Cabot books, doing anything else but go on her computer, 'cause she had all those pictures with Ryan in them, and she so do not want to see that asshole's face every again.

Maybe Ryan was the reason why she couldn't sleep. Was that totally crazy? Well, yeah. That had to be crazy. Like, before Ryan came, Kelly was sleeping fine. So if she slept fine before she'd even met Ryan, then she should be sleeping fine after Ryan, right?

Wrong. Sooooo wrong. Because at this point, Kelly wasn't used to sleeping alone. There was always Ryan at her side, or lying on top of her chest, or, sometimes, sleeping on the floor after Kelly accidentally knocked him out of the bed that one time. And Kelly didn't do the sleeping-together-three-nights-a-week thing that all her friends did. No, she and Ryan were in bed together almost every single night, except for Sundays, when Ryan's mom made him go to church with the rest of his family. To make a long story short, Kelly couldn't really remember a time Ryan wasn't in her bed these past few weeks. His body imprint was practically imprinted in the freakin' futon, for God's sake. So it would make sense that sleeping without Ryan would be a little bit weird.

But Kelly only expected it to be this way for just a few days, and then she'd be back to normal. However, it had been like two weeks since they broke up, and Kelly was still awake. What did this mean? Would she be like one of those vampires in Twilight (which would be so awesome 'cause she's hot like Rosalie but not as bitchy, and Kelly would totally date Edward if he wasn't in love with Bella, who kinda reminds Kelly of Pam for some reason) who could never, ever sleep? She hoped not. The lack of sleep had caused--and, ew, this was totally gross--bags to start forming under Kelly's eyes, which was a definite no-no, according to _Cosmo_, which is_ totally_ Kelly's beauty and sex tips Bible.

But then there was _Marie Claire_, which said that the cure to baggy eyes was--Wait a minute. Why is "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga playing. Kelly's brown eyes shifted down to her right palm, the fingers of which were closed over her light pink cell phone. The phone feels kinda warm as Lady Gaga announces an incoming text message, and Kelly decides to read the message as soon as the chorus to "Poker Face" is done.

It's from Sam, who is another one of Kelly's best friends, even though she works for Staples, Dunder-Mifflin's competition. A wide grin took over Kelly's face as she read what her friend had to say.

_Sam: Hey, Kelly! I was bored and put Dunder-Mifflin in the Yahoo! search engine. All I have to say is OMG! I can't believe that a-hole Ryan is working for corporate now! Kel, you should've listened to me when I said he was a total dick. I mean, what kind of boyfriend dumps you so he can take a new job in NY? And believe me, he didn't do it because a long-distance relationship would be too hard. Anyway, text me back whenever you feel like it. Love you and cheer up! You'll get over Ryan soon._

_xxx, sammy_

Her heart sank, just like the Titanic, and Sam's message is the iceberg. If Sam knew, then the rest of her friends knew, and that meant her sisters knew, and that DEFINITELY meant her parents knew. Oh my God. Kelly's parents had never liked him ever since the Diwali celebration a few months back when he picked his XBOX over having babies with Kelly. Now that Ryan had a successful career, Kelly was sure that her parents would actually push her to get back together with Ryan. "He's such a successful man now, Kelly. Not exactly a doctor, but he's still making a lot of money. You have to go up to New York and see him." It disgusted Kelly that she knew exactly what her mother was going to say.

Kelly stared at Sam's message, not even wanting to type up a blasé, I-don't-give-a-damn-Ryan-who? response. She just felt too many things at once. Heartbreak. Pain. Tiredness. Anger towards Ryan. Anger towards Sam for calling Ryan a dick, even though it was true. Anger towards herself, especially, for not being the type of girlfriend who Ryan would ditch in favor of better things.

Kelly sighed, getting up from the couch to make a pot of Hazelnut Roast instant coffee, the kind Starbucks sold in those wrinkled brown bags. Today was going to be a long and suckish day, she could just tell.


End file.
